“I strongly considered a potential run and, believe me, there were times when I thought I was definitely in and I went back and forth,” Curtatone said in a telephone interview today. “But what really become glaringly evident is that I’m in the right place at the right time [for] my wife and family.”

Curtatone, who was first elected in 2003, said a statewide campaign would come at “too much of a cost” to his family life — he has four school-aged boys.

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But, he said, he still planned on being involved in issues “that effect every municipality and every corner of the Commonwealth.”

Curtatone’s announcement answers one of the few outstanding questions about the field of Democratic contenders hoping to succeed Governor Deval Patrick.

State Attorney General Martha Coakley; Treasurer Steven Grossman; Donald M. Berwick, a former Obama administration health care official; Joseph Avellone, a biotechnology executive; Juliette N. Kayyem, a former state and federal homeland security official; and Daniel A. Wolf, a state senator, have all declared they will run for the Democratic nomination for governor, though Wolf has suspended his campaign.

On the Republican side, Charles Baker, the 2010 GOP nominee, is running and is widely expected to be his party’s standard-bearer in thirteen months.